User:Spalding

Hello, fellow Wikipedians!

My Introduction to Wikipedia

I loved this site the minute I found it in a Google search. In fact, I just now caught myself looking for the edit tab when reading a normal web page that needed a little tweak, so I think I have a problem already! And the mouseovers on these wiki links, especially when renamed, remind me of Mr. Subliminal.

My Interests

But seriously, my interests are engineering, especially human factors and usability, cognitive science, jazz, epistemology for dummies, pop science, nonfiction, especially science books, technical writing and mental models, collaboration as in Wikipedia and participatory design, consumer protection, and bicycling.

My Wikipedia MO

Here's my entry in the Wikipedia:new user log from August 2004. Since then my editing style has been mainly working on links - adding both internal and external ones (usually one of the first few on the first page of Google hits), and fixing broken ones - I HATE linkrot.

Recently in early 2005 I have noticed that, just as it often happens with the problem of keeping track of anything, there are often articles that are not linked to similar ones and it can lead to much repetition of similar articles under similar names, so lately I have been liberally adding internal links. BTW, what is the common term for these links? Freelinks ? Free-links ? Wikilinks ? Wiki-links ? None of them has an article that I can find. This concept is similar to the need for a common glossary in technical writing, so that consistent names are used for the same thing.

I also create stubs when I am struck with a thought. My watchlist has been growing and growing, since I leave my breadcrumb trail by using the default of watching edited pages. The watchlist is then watched for vandalism, spelling, typos, or anything strange.

Some Gushing!

I am very excited about Wikipedia, which in IMO is nearly as groundbreaking as the web itself as the embodiment of the ideals of Vannevar Bush and Tim Berners-Lee on making accumulated human knowledge so accessible that the mechanics of retrieving it doesn't get in the way of thinking, or in other words, it has flow. In February 2005 I joined the after thinking that one of my long articles had been deleted!

My Latest Toy

Dillo - I just discovered this wonderful piece of software when commissioning my Linux toy, an old PC brought back to life for web surfing. An old Cyrix 686 processor (first with 32 MB, now 160 MB of EDO memory) can now surf like lightning, thanks to Red Hat Linux plus two pieces of minimalist software - the Blackbox window manager, and Dillo. I was especially impressed with performance on Wikipedia compared to some other computers I have used. While Dillo only does sites with simple html, no java or https, it seems to have no problem with php. A nice feature is built in html syntax checking - almost all web sites have some errors.

What Wikipedia is not

As I expanded this use page, I wondered if I was starting to blog here, and violate the Wikipedia is not a soapbox policy. I don't really think so. On an initial perusal of the guidelines for user pages, I think I'm ok, since this info is mostly Wikipedia-related along with a small amount of personal info. Any opinions?

Hi Spalding - Brookie here - I think you're okay on your musing - it's albout you on the Wiki which seems fine to Me! Brookie 15:55, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Nomination for Patron Saint of Wikipedia

It just has to be Cliff Clavin! Dontcha think?